Nonono. You file an incident report. Your drive thru has cameras right? Talk to your sm and if they don’t care keep moving up the chain. Keep filing incident reports on the individual people and if someone you’ve filed a report for shows back up, deny your service, and tell an ssv or sm to kick them out. No matter how much money we make it’s not worth it. Find someone who cares and get rid of those shitty people. I’m sorry that your work place has been tainted with such people and I hope this will be resolved.

that actually makes me so angry, i’m sorry you had to deal with that.

"If you can't communicate respectfully then I can't help you."

You can and should refuse to serve customers who make racist remarks towards you. Any SSV or manager worth their weight will back you up. I know I would have as a former SSV. Please do not feel like you have to be dehumanized in the name of customer service.

Make sure you file an incident report if you do refuse service so that if they choose to call corporate, they already have your side of things (that the customer was racist) and it should not be an issue for you in regards to your employment.

Oh this makes me see red. If Im on DTO and hear weird racist (but "oh dont worry about it its just a joke") remarks like this or people creeping on my UNDERAGE baristas I deadass just lean around the youngin and make angry eye contact and hold it until they look away. Stole this from my fav SSV. Make them feel what they just said. Unacceptable. They don't even deserve my words at this point. Ugh Im sorry.

“Ah you can just tell us small medium or large if our sizes are too difficult for you”
Granted, I’m a two year partner and I know my manager wouldn’t bat an eye at the veiled passive aggression but I don’t take that shit.

That person was very shity. I would’ve fucked with them.
Also telling your ssv after the fact, they can’t do much about it. I would’ve asked if you wanted to get off window but that’s about it.

I’m so sorry you had to encounter that and even more sorry that your concern was brushed off and invalidated! I’ve had a couple interactions like that in previous jobs but it was more because I am Hispanic and I understand Spanish way more than I speak it and even my own people insult me. It’s quite annoying and sad really

Let me come in on my off time and cough really loud next to them

Me: “This is a grande.”

Them: “Well, you are supposed to know I meant large.”

Me: “No, it’s not a large, it’s a grande.”

Them: “But grande means large in Spanish.”

Me: “Did you want grande or venti?”

Them: “I wanted a large.”

Me: “This is the grande. Didn’t you say you wanted a grande?”

It took me a while to learn that you don’t engage. They want you to argue on their level. They want you to step down into the filth where they are. Don’t give them that. If you stick to the facts you can’t get in trouble (unless your manager or DM sucks. But at that point you’re f@cked regardless.) I don’t argue and I don’t give them the free stuff they expect from their fake problem. If I’m wrong, I admit it and apologize. But if I’m not wrong, I’m not gonna apologize for the fact that REALITY bother them. Like “oh, sorry that the laws of the universe are inconveniencing you today. My bad. Let me just change reality for you.” I’m ambiguously ethnic looking (people can’t tell what I am) so I get stuff like that all the time. If I argued back with them I would be doing that all day. If I let it bother me I would be in an insane asylum. I don’t have time to give these people the pleasure of harassing me. And if I let them do it today, they’ll come back and do it every day because now they know who they can pick on for free.

Disclaimer: in the end, only you know what you can safely say and do. Sometimes, if you feel physically in danger it’s best to just do exactly what you did. I wasn’t there so I can’t gage the situation.

That’s a violation of your 3rd place policy I believe, and you don’t have to serve him if it continues. I’d fill out an incident report and have a copy of the 3rd place policy handy to read to him if he shows up again. That’s super fucking shitty

Wtf is wrong with people?! The first time I went to Starbucks I ordered a "medium frappe." 🤣🤣 No joke. They kindly corrected me.

You should have corrected them and said "actually they named these sizes after they took a trip to Italy, so this has nothing to do with what language I speak and it's on the menu in order". I would make them feel stupid as hell cause that's not okay at all.

I hate those people. They know starbucks sizes are different yet get mad at us for following starbucks names.

also it’s Italian, that idiot

You can refuse service for racially motivated comments. Talk to your shift and store manager!

As a white person, I feel like it's not my place to offer you any advice on this. I wouldn't hold any judgment of you for whatever reaction you had or were to have to this type of behavior and harassment. I can say that that person is fucking garbage. Stupid for ordering something without knowing what it is and dehumanizing to you when they were the one in the wrong.

I'm so sorry that you experience this at your workplace. It should not be brushed off, but I'm not surprised to hear that it is. I don't have faith in this company when it comes to this kind of thing--protecting partners against abuse from customers, even when it's racist abuse. That being said, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't bother to continue to report behavior like this from customers to your management team. Some supervisors and managers will care. At a Starbucks in my city, a customer that we all don't like because her drink is impossible for me to understand and she's extremely picky about it got reprimanded for racist behavior.

Also, your username is great.

I reported a blatantly racist partner at my store before and nothing happened 😀 they’re not as bad recently because our hours are different but nor it’s more subtle and they treat me like the tokenized minority

"Sir, unless this is your first time at Starbucks, we have been open for decades, and our sizing is a well known part of pop culture. If you don't know the sizes by now, that is something I can't help you with."

Frickin racist assbag. I'm sorry you had to deal with that.

An incident report is legal precedent basically. I mean ideally your dm would ban someone off them alone but worst case scenario you get mad one day and respond then you’re gonna wanna have these incident reports to back you up. And if this person comes back you can call another barista or supervisor over to witness it that way they can corroborate your story. That makes a world of difference.

And yeah you should be able to refuse service right when this happens but the world isn’t perfect and you gotta put yourself first. To me this means taking into consideration the likely outcome of various actions and choosing the action that’ll probably generate the best outcome for you. I mean even with corporate aside I’ve had angry customers throw firecrackers into a store before so sometimes actions have consequences they shouldn’t and I think you gotta just take those possibilities into consideration and roll with it. That doesn’t mean roll over that just means to do what is best for you. Punch them in the face if that’ll generate the best outcome for you. They deserve it. But also don’t escalate the situation for yourself if all you want is to deescalate it. Escalate it only if you want to.

That being said I have taken over for baristas and dealt with customers who made them uncomfortable before. That is something I can do without any extra information and I’m always down to do it. If you had responded with a snarky joke you’d probably be fine since they were joking with you, which is a precedent. And hell if you can find a job that’ll treat you better go for that. I’m sorry your ssv brushed you off though. I hope they were just scatterbrained in the moment or misinterpreted what you were saying (I often need to really slow things down and have a conversation to understand the details of an incident myself because my initial reaction is so often based upon a misinterpretation) as opposed to actually not caring about your feelings.

And I didn’t understand the utility of incident reports for years so make sure you let everyone know you can file them on any dickhead customer. I can’t promise they’ll get banned but it does set a precedent.

Ewwwww “Gracias chica”

I hate when people think this shit is acceptable to say. I haven't had anything like this happen at Starbucks, but when I used to work for a Mexican fast food company I had this happen to me:

So on our menu, we had tostadas. This white guy comes in one day (the location I worked at was mostly visited by older white people) and asks me for "tostidos". He asks me for it repeatedly and I ask if he wants a "tostada", but that's not what he's looking for. Then he says, "you're Mexican, you should know what I'm talking about" and at that point I was just like "......." and then he explains a little more and I realize he's asking for "taquitos" but had no fucking idea what he was talking about. Anyway, we didn't have taquitos.

The moment they said “you” were “one of those” you had every right to refuse service in my opinion. Could be the absolute rage I feel for this situation, but what the fuck.

And that cheeky ass, patronizing “gracias chica”, just unbelievable.

Racism is a lot different from just rude. Zero tolerance. ZERO.

We are conditioned to think we have to put up with awful customers and shrug it off, but like really, any racism whatsoever crosses that line of what we should be expected to tolerate.

I’m so sorry you had to go through this.

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Let me say first, I wasn’t there and didn’t hear the vibe from this customer.
However, my mother is pretty old and has Alzheimer’s. One of the things she remembers is that she minored in Spanish Literature and she likes to practice her Spanish as often as she can with people she believes will appreciate it. For example, anyone who works at a Mexican restaurant, in her mind, would love to hear her speaking her rusty college Spanish. To her, she’s making people feel welcome in an area that may not appreciate immigrants. Even if they’re not immigrants.
She would never go to Starbucks, of course, but I can totally imagine her “correcting” someone that grande means large.
Rereading your post, with the phrasing those people used, makes me think they probably are racists, especially with how they said “one of those.”
But how could they see you from where they ordered? How would they expect you to speak Spanish and know they meant large?
My Tarbucks, of course, did not have a drive through.